Tony Ressler moved to buy the Hawks in the midst of their finest regular season and, upon taking ownership, made a mistake: He believed the status could remain quo.
Ressler listened hardest to the administrators in place, although none of those had been the prime mover in remaking the Hawks from an OK team with a bloated payroll into a 60-win crew with four All-Stars. He believed those administrators — he called them “rock stars” — could keep doing it because they assured him they could. Big shock there.
Today, as the NBA readies for its All-Star game and the trade deadline looms next week, we hear via ESPN that the "rock stars" are huddling to decide whether to break up the band. (Meaning the team, not the front office.) The Hawks have reverted to what they were before Danny Ferry took this franchise by the scruff of the neck — not nearly bad but not especially good. Wednesday dawned with them atop the Southeast Division by a half-game, but on pace to win 14 fewer games than last season.
The continuity on which Ressler banked has availed him little. Mike Budenholzer is a good coach, but not necessarily an ace roster-wrangler. Wes Wilcox was an able deputy to Ferry, but we ask again: Does Budenholzer/Wilcox inspire the same belief as Ferry/Budenholzer? Granted, keeping Ferry would have presented a PR issue for the new owner, who didn't seem interested in even trying. "What was working was Bud, Wilcox and (CEO Steve) Koonin," Ressler said in June. "I want that to keep working."
It hasn’t exactly stopped working. (Again, the Hawks lead their division. It is, however, the only NBA division they’d be leading.) It just hasn’t worked as well. And now the Hawks, as ESPN suggested and everybody already knew, must ask and answer loaded questions. As in:
1. "Is our team as constituted capable of doing anything in the postseason? Does anybody but Cleveland scare us in the East? And what if LeBron James turns his ankle? Can we really hit the reset button now?"
2. "Do we trade Al Horford, whom we love but who has became part of the reason we can't get a rebound, before he can leave as a free agent and leave us with nothing in return? Or do we throw everything into trying to keep him — we can offer more money/years than anybody else — even though he'd be 35 at contract's end and we got really good only because Ferry was able to free us of such big-ticket deals?"
3. "If we trade Horford, can we hope to receive anything approximating his value to us? (Rebounding notwithstanding.) How many other floor-spacing big men are there? How many of those would be available? Would the Clippers cut bait on Blake Griffin? If so, would we want a guy — admittedly a massively talented guy — who's not playing because he punched an equipment man?"
4. "A lot of teams want Jeff Teague, but do we trade him now? He's under reasonable contract ($8 million) through next season. He's not the league's best point guard, but he's in the top dozen. We have Dennis Schroder, who's younger and cheaper and almost ready, but wouldn't it be prudent to let this group try one more time before pulling the ripcord? Couldn't we get a bigger return on Teague over the summer than in the deadline frenzy?"
5. "Atlanta actually discovered we existed last winter. Even if that ardor waned after we got swept by LeBron, this team still occupies a higher local profile than it has since the '80s. Do we risk alienating those who just tuned in by trading Horford and/or Teague? (After all, we're not the Braves. We plan to stay downtown.)"
6. "On the other hand, if we don't believe we're going anywhere in the foreseeable future, can we in good conscience stand pat? At what point do we admit that this year's team isn't last year's team and never will be again?"
7. "Do we really believe Budenholzer, whose days and nights are occupied doing actual coaching of an actual team, has the time or the managerial experience to bring off a massive midseason course correction?"
8. "Remind me again. Why did we think buying out Ferry was such a good idea?"
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